The Big Day - A Selection of Photographs from the Dyche Collection

As the forthcoming Royal Wedding hits the headlines, we travel back in time to bring you a selection of wedding photographs from one of our Archives and Heritage Collections. The Big Day is a selection of photographs taken from the Ernest Dyche Collection. Many of the images in the collection are portraits of unnamed subjects. Is this you, a friend or a relative? If you can identify anyone in these photographs email libraries@birmingham.gov.uk Click on the thumbnail photograph to see a larger version.

Ernest Dyche (1887-1973) was a self taught photographer who initially specialised in theatrical portraits producing photographs of music and variety hall artists who performed on the Birmingham stage. Dyche opened his first studio in 1910 in Bordesley Green and then opened a second studio in Balsall Heath a few years later.

During the 1950s Dyche clientele changed significantly reflecting both the decline of theatregoers and the incoming wave of migrants arriving from Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent. For the next 25 years the bulk of the studio clientele was drawn from Birmingham and Balsall Heath Asian and African-Caribbean community. The studio finally closed in the 1980s.

The Dyche Collection was donated to Birmingham Libraries in 1990.

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